The text discusses using Jaeger tracing in Apache Kafka® projects to trace how data flows through a distributed system. It provides an example project that uses Kafka Streams, a Kafka consumer/producer, and Spring Kafka consumer/producer. The author then explains how to make the Jaeger tracing solution more robust by using Kafka to send spans to Jaeger instead of directly communicating with it. This approach ensures fault tolerance, storage, and replayability for the distributed system. Additionally, the text mentions that Confluent Cloud can be used as a fully managed event streaming platform powered by Apache Kafka.